


Black Sails, Bronze Sea

by WearingOutWinter



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Post-Canon, dream lover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 15:24:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WearingOutWinter/pseuds/WearingOutWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When faced with the impossible, Ariadne builds the only thing she could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Sails, Bronze Sea

It’s getting harder and harder to find her, down here in the dark. But no matter how many times the path splits and twists and splits again, she’ll keep walking. After all, it’s what she’s meant to do.

That’s what she tells herself, anyway. The fact that it’s also what she wants, desperately so, is just coincidence.

She plays the red thread through her fingers, spooling it out behind as she takes each careful step. The walls here are wooden, stained dark and engraved with… something or other. She doesn’t care to look too closely. Further on it will change to stone, just as farther back it was brick, and the hissing gaslight will change to buzzing bulbs or crackling torches. What the thing is made of doesn’t matter: the fact of it remains.

It’s always empty here. No fragments to be found, no lost memories or bits of her subconscious. Just herself, and the walls, and eventually _her._ She has to remake this place each time, to keep her own recollections out of it—because one time she didn’t, and it was _horribly_ distracting—but even though she knows ever twist and every turn, she’s never sure just where she’ll find her. She can make the cracks, the fissures and trapdoors and secret ways that allow her in, but she can’t know where exactly she’ll end up. In the whole of this world, there is just one thing outside of her control.

There’s a certain poetry in that, she thinks.

This all happened by accident. Unlooked for. Unexpected. Almost unimagined. And yet, the fact of it remains.

-x-

It started after she got back to Paris, her meager student’s bank account full to bursting with the payoff from Saito’s job. She got herself a new apartment three minutes’ walk from campus, kept up with her studies, and wondered just what else she would with that much money. That’s when she started to dream.

She had wondered if she still would, after something Cobb had said: if her time in Limbo had burned something out of her brain, and her subconscious wasn’t up to the task anymore. She needn’t have worried. She could dream just fine. But her dreams weren’t exactly the same as they had been before, either.

The first few times she saw her, it was nothing more than a face glimpsed in a crowd. One of many mourners at a funeral, standing on the platform as the train she was on pulled away, and so on. But each night, she seemed a little closer, a little less like the background. And Ariadne found herself attempting to get closer still, close enough to hear her speak, speak with any voice but her own, confirm that she was not who she appeared to be.

Ariadne caught up with her just once, in a normal dream. She found her in the library of her own university, idly paging through a book as rain hammered on the windows. Ariadne crept towards her slowly, hesitantly—because it would be so easy for this to become a nightmare. But the woman turned towards her, smiling sadly as the thin volume in her hands dropped to the floor with a soft thump.

“I think I know you, little one. The beautiful girl I met once in a half-remembered dream.”

Ariadne blushed. “But I’m not in your dream,” she said when she found her voice. “You’re in mine.”

The older woman nodded thoughtfully, dark curls bouncing just a little. “I’m always in someone’s.” she reached out and cupped Ariadne’s cheek, thumb soft against her skin. “I think I will enjoy being in yours.”

She had woken then, to sheets unaccountably sweaty and thoughts unaccountably amorous.

She skipped class that day, and spent a little of her fortune to acquire one of the (illegal) devices that would allow her to enter her own dreams. She needed to see what was down there, to see if the woman in her dream was nothing more than her own imagination.

She made it a labyrinth in appearance as well as fact because it seemed appropriate: a lone hero venturing into the dark in search of something precious. And, at the center of that first stone maze, she found her, blue silk gown about her shoulders, feet trailing in a clear pool. A water-nymph waiting for rescue. A siren waiting for a ship.

“You’re here” was all she found the breath to say.

Nodding, the woman rose, silver droplets clinging distractingly to her legs. “You invited me here.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d know the signs.”

She smiled gently. “I have been with your mazes before, little one. I know your walls well enough.”

Ariadne blushed, and stepped closer. “Have the projections troubled you? I made the maze to keep them away, but—”

She shook her head. “They have not. They know you want me.”

Ariadne blinked. “I—”

“Want me here, I mean” she amended, her lip twitching slightly.

“I—” Ariadne began, before deciding there was no better place to say it. “No, you’re right.” She stepped close, caught the other woman’s hand, and laid it on her own cheek. “I want to know what it is to be a lover,” she breathed. “To be one half of a whole.”

The woman regarded her for an eternity, her hand warm on her flesh. Then, slowly, as if giving her every chance to turn and run, her other hand settled on Ariadne’s hip, dark eyes fluttered closed, and she slowly brought their lips together.

Ariadne’s first thought was of the softness of it, the sweetness. But there was hint of strength there, in the hand on her hip, in the purr that vibrated her own throat. Then the other woman pulled her flush against her, and she decided feeling was better than thinking.

-x-

She finds what she’s looking for in a dead-end corner, where the wooden paneling has faded into bookshelves packed tight with musty tomes. There is a fireplace as well, and two empty chairs turned towards it. And there is a bed, with wine-red sheets and goose-grey pillows, standing invitingly in the lamplight.

For the thousandth time, Ariadne thinks of how mad this is, the labyrinth and everything it contains. Because Mal is dead. She died on the sidewalk outside of a luxury hotel. The ghost of her died in Limbo, when Cobb finally made his choice. Mal is dead—

As Ariadne steps towards the empty bed, she feels an arm slide around her waist. She catches the scent of familiar perfume before a pair of warm lips are pressed against the back of her neck.

“I missed you, little one.”

—but the fact of her remains.  


End file.
